John McGlynn hails Falkirk’s ‘courage’ after cup shoot-out win at Hearts

Falkirk manager John McGlynn hailed his team’s “courage” after the Bairns inflicted Hearts’ first home defeat of the season with a dramatic Scottish Cup fourth round shoot-out win at Tynecastle.

The Bairns went ahead through substitute Ben Parkinson before Lawrence Shankland drew the hosts level from the penalty spot.

And after extra time could not separate the teams, Parkinson – a recent arrival from Newcastle – scored the decisive spot-kick after Hearts forward Elton Kabangu was the only player to miss the target from 12 yards.

McGlynn said: “That felt brilliant, absolutely brilliant. It was a big game, a huge game away to the league leaders.

“It wasn’t the draw that we were hoping for.

“We scored a really, really good goal and then it’s really just a matter of trying to hold on to it.

“Hearts scored the penalty and then obviously with extra time and it was just a matter of battling and battling and battling.

“And I’m delighted to say that we’ve obviously managed to show a lot of courage in the penalties, because you’ve got 17-18,000 (Hearts fans) booing every one of your players.

“I’m not criticising that but it takes a bit of balls to go up when that’s happening. So I’m delighted with that.

“We’ve come to the league leaders tonight and we had to battle.

“It wasn’t perfect, it wasn’t beautiful, but we had to dig in.

“There’s many ways to win a football match and sometimes it’s unfair on penalties so we’re delighted to be through and I can’t wait for the draw.”

It was a costly night for Hearts with Shankland going off with a muscle strain at the start of extra time and the striker now a major doubt for next weekend’s top-of-the-table clash at home to Celtic.

When asked about Shankland, Hearts manager Derek McInnes, who confirmed that midfielder Cammy Devlin would be missing for around six weeks with an ankle injury, said: “Not great, I don’t think. I don’t know exactly what he’s done. Again, when it comes to penalties, you want to keep him on for obvious reasons.

“He doesn’t look good for next week anyway.”

McInnes, meanwhile, admits he draws no comfort from the fact that Hearts can now put all their energy into their title charge.

He added: “The only benefit you get for this is a few games less. You want a cup run, there’s no positives really to take as it stands now.

“We’ve got eight days before we play Celtic. We’ll dust ourselves down, we’ll see where we are and we’ll get over the disappointment because that’s the job. We’ll be ready for them when it comes round.”